Catholic Schools Week is as good a time as any to step back
and ponder the meaning of life. Or in my case, the meaning of spending
basically an extra mortgage payment every month to send my three children to a
Catholic school, when the public schools in my town are perfectly lovely. (After
all, I’d love that little trailer by the Sandusky Bay. I’m just sayin’.)
And my head is also swirling this week as a Catholic School
teacher, amid high school application due dates and Crazy Hair Day and getting
the report cards and little beige book completed just in the nick of time. I do
think it goes without saying that Catholic school teachers do more with less,
and create a whole lot of miracles along the way.
So why shell out all this hard-earned money, and make it a
point to EARN the money in a Catholic School?!?! A great question. I suppose
that since history repeats itself, one could argue that I am simply sticking
with the tradition of the Irish Catholics that have gone before me. There is
something to be said for my Grandpa James Kelly, who worked without ceasing to
send four girls, including my mom, through Catholic schools. Or maybe it is the
influence of his oldest daughter, my aunt and godmother Sister Ann Kelly.
Auntie was recently honored for SIXTY plus years of service to the community of
Ursulines. This is an accomplishment I cannot fathom, but her razor-sharp
philosophical mind, humble prayer life, and greeting card ministry have
certainly changed me for the better. It might even be my time at Gannon
University that cemented my love of Catholic education. Within that Catholic
University I was able to attend retreats at a monastery, view poverty up close
on the streets of Erie, and be challenged in my faith by very loving (and
ironically not always Catholic!) mentors. Or maybe it is because on September
11, 2001, when the Twin Towers and our nation’s innocence were falling, I was
teaching in a public high school and simply could not share my true feelings
and beliefs about prayer during a crisis.
There are countless other reasons, big and small, for why I
choose Catholic education for my children. Maybe I have a soft spot for blue
plaid and little boys in trousers and belts, or want my offspring to know that
the rosary is not actually a necklace. Maybe its because my brother-in-law can
never quite believe that I know ALL the lyrics to ALL the church songs by rote,
and I want my kids to possess that same party skill. (“Bloom Where You’re
Planted,” anyone?) Perhaps I just want my loves to realize that faith is more
all-encompassing than Sunday morning, and that when life hands them lemons,
that God is waiting at the ready with the sugar and ice. Whether it is a hard
math test or a forgotten gym bag, or any number of things that can ruin a
perfectly good school day.
Although my only public school learning experiences were in
kindergarten, where the O for Octopus book is all that stands out in my mind, and
at the University of Pittsburgh, where I was playing with power tools and
hanging theatre lights all day, I don’t subscribe to the view that public
schools are inferior or wild or heathen. In fact, I truly loved teaching at
Firelands High School, a very public school filled with hard-working families. And
I certainly don’t judge other Catholics that make a public school choice for
their children.
But I do know, at the end of the day, that I want my
children at St. Joseph School. Even when I joke that our school family is a
categorically dysfunctional one. Or when I have a problem with a parent or
student. Or when someone treats my daughter in a decidedly un-Christlike way. We
are all human, after all. But I know above all else, that like the Spanish
proverb says, God writes straight with crooked lines.
And these crooked lines are the reason I am giving up the
beach house to send my kids to a Catholic school. Beyond my aunt and the blue
plaid and the high academic expectations and the rosary each day, it is my
father that influences my choice. Not raised in the faith like my mother, he
nevertheless insisted on Catholic schools for his three girls. I have always
wondered what made him write that check each month, and work so hard to share
the Catholic faith he did not yet have. And THAT, I think, is the miracle of
this Catholic school. That God can work from the inside out and the outside
in. That my father could make his own
Communion and Confirmation during the spring of my eighth grade year, a few
months before I was Confirmed myself. That
he learned his faith from his DAUGHTERS, instead of the other way around.
Evangelization, as I just taught my eighth graders this week, is spreading the
good news of God, and you don’t have to be a grown up to do it. Catholic
schools broadcast this through macaroni crosses and painted hand prints and learning to use the gifts that God Himself
has bestowed…..even if you don’t even WANT the gift of mathematics one bit!!! We learn to dream big and act meek and always
genuflect on our right knee.
I know there are other ways to achieve a lasting faith and a
belief in one’s own abilities, but my money’s on SJS for my kids, and the faith
and resilience I know they will need as they grow in this ever-changing world.
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